Matt Damon clarifies comments about gay actors on 'Ellen'

LOS ANGELES — Matt Damon does not believe that gay actors should stay in the closet, nor did he even ever say as much.

But he caught hell on Monday all the same — many headlines stated outright that those were his words — and so The Martian actor felt the need to clarify comments he made that were published this weekend in The Guardian during an appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show.

"It's painful when things get said that you don't believe," he told Ellen in the brief exchange. "You know what I mean? And then it gets represented that that's what you believe. Because in the blogosphere, there's no penalty for just taking the ball and running with it."

Watch the interview clip here:

In Damon's interview with The Guardian for its piece published Sunday, he was talking about when, during Good Will Hunting's Oscar run, it was rumored that he and Ben Affleck were a couple, a bit of gossip that "put us in a weird position of having to answer, you know what I mean? Which was then really deeply offensive. I don’t want to, like [imply] it’s some sort of disease — then it’s like I’m throwing my friends under the bus."

But the graf that really had people lighting torches Tuesday was this:

“I think it must be really hard for actors to be out publicly,” he continues. “But in terms of actors, I think you’re a better actor the less people know about you period. And sexuality is a huge part of that. Whether you’re straight or gay, people shouldn’t know anything about your sexuality because that’s one of the mysteries that you should be able to play.”

Damon sure seems to be speaking in the passive/theoretical here — people shouldn't know, he says, and actors should be able to underplay their personal lives. That would make actors more effective in conveying realism to audiences, he muses, and through a very neutral prism of basic human nature, he's not wrong; it's the very argument for going with an unknown actor in any role. It's one reason why sometimes, newcomers get a shot.

What's more, Damon's lament — which, if we take him at his word on Ellen, was in the context of rumors around he and Affleck in the late 1990s — could easily be read in reverse: Letting people think that they were together should have been a part of their mystique, if they so chose for it to be.

Ben Affleck and Matt Damon display their Oscars in 1998.

Image: Reed Saxon/Associated Press

But that's not the reality these days, and certainly less so than it was in 1997.

All the same, the social media mob read into Damon's quote that he believes gay actors should stay closeted, a train of thought he may have invited by saying "it must be really hard for actors to be out publicly." With many out actors — Neil Patrick Harris, Ian McKellen, Zachary Quinto and Matt Bomer come to mind — doing just fine, that's probably not as true as it used to be, and there's no doubt that growing the ranks of openly gay entertainers has a de-stigmatizing effect both inside and outside of Hollywood.

But did Damon "warn" actors not to come out? Did he say they unequivocally should not express their sexuality, that to do so was somehow wrong? He did not. That sentiment simply does not exist in his words, context or no context.

Of course, giving Matt Damon the benefit of the doubt isn't the cool thing to do at the moment, especially after his reaction to producer Effie Brown on the season premiere of Project Greenlight. In it, Brown suggested that casting diversity was an important factor in choosing a director for the HBO show's project; Damon shot back that picking the best candidate for the sake of the show (and the film they would be making within it) was the top priority.

Yet another choice of words (and tone, frankly) overripe for interpretation — and yet another apology came of it. Don't expect to see Damon ever speak candidly again about much of anything.

For her part, DeGeneres seemed pretty confident that Damon's heart was in the right place, and that his words were twisted into something much more sinister than intended.

"And it shocks me that you and Ben are not gay," she added as a final tension-breaker. "But. If you want to deny it and keep the mystery in your marriage ... ."

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